USASTRATCOM

This blog was created for USASTRATCOM Long Lines Battalion Army personnel who served in Taiwan during the 1965-72 time frame. Specifically, those who lived and worked in and around Taipei are the target. If you worked at the Grass Mountain or Gold Mountain facilities or anywhere in downtown Taipei, we would like to hear from you. All are welcome to visit and contribute to this blog. Your comments and pictures are encouraged.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Mimeograph Machine In Teletype Message Printing

The one machine that could be found in almost every school, military base, and many corporations for over 50 years was the mimeograph machine.

Every message sent and received at bases and posts all over Taiwan depended on these machines for duplicate copies.

Today, duplicates are reproduced by machines called photocopiers made by Xerox, Canon, or other corporations.

For those of us who worked at the Taiwan Terminal, RUAGST, the job was to run punched paper tape through a reader, and onto a roll of mimeograph paper on a printer.

We then would put the message in a folder and our job was complete.Each morning a courier picked up all of the messages and distributed them to the assigned destination around Taipei to be run off on one of these "Ditto" machines.

Photo from yesteryearremembered.com

This is a basic mimeograph machine with fluid and a manual hand crank. It's a simple process, but difficult to describe.

To see one of these contraptions in action, clickHERE. This machine shown was electric, and made as many copies as needed.

Photo from radiomatic.blogspot.com

For many of us in our golden years, the smell of tests freshly run from the ditto machine was a unique experience. Who knows how many brain cells were destroyed.

If you enjoyed the smell of mimeograph fluid, you also may have liked the smell of gasoline being pumped. The lead additive is now illegal, but we enjoyed it while we could.

Photos above and below from atomictoasters.com

This stuff was poisonous, but readily available.

Photo from creativepro.com

This was another one of Thomas Edison's inventions. He licensed it to the A. B. Dick Company.

All posters from yesteryearremembered.com unless noted

Poster from pixgood.com

Salesmen thought these machines would be a part of business for decades. They were right.

Poster from radiomatic.blogspot.com

Poster from pixgood.com

This is an ad from 1970.

This is how a mimeographed page, ready for printing, would look like.

Photo from yesteryearremembered.com

Photo from pinterest.com

Photo from atomictoasters.com

Photo from kids.britannica.com

So easy, even a sergeant can do it.

Photo from atomictoasters.com

Photo from atomictoasters.com

This was one of Edison's longer lasting inventions. Click HERE to see it again.